Charles Percy, 1919-2011
Charles Percy-former Republican Senator from Illinois died on September 17th at the ripe old age of 91. I met him in his last year in the Senate when I was in Washington on an internship/study program run by Hamilton college. Jonathan S. Tobin lambasts him and his views on Israel here. This is pretty much the ne’ plus ultra violation of the ancient maxim De Mortuis Nil Nisi Bonum and I will refrain from such viciousness as I don’t think it’s warranted.
When Paul Simon (he who partnered with bow ties not with Garfunckle) beat him in 1984, the Senate lost a commanding head of Senatorial hair. No Senator of that time or perhaps since, looked so much like a Senator should as Chuck Percy.
His obituary notes “The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal all described him as “pompous.” I think his hair and bearing contributed to this judgment but for a Senator, it worked.
It is no surprise that the New York Times lauds him. All enemies of Richard M. Nixon will be lauded in its pages upon death. Alger Hiss got a good word there. But the man who recommended John Paul Stevens to the bench after twice voting against Nixon appointees deserves the praise of that paper. (Justice Stevens ended his career as the main intellectual and judicial leader of the New York Times-wing of the bench.)
Percy lost both a wife and a daughter to premature deaths and bore up with incredible dignity. It is also true that scandal never touched him. But before nostalgia for Republicans who were not conservative gets out of hand we should look at the committee Percy ran. In his obituary the Times notes the old perennial that the Chairman of the Foreign Relation Committee seems out of touch to their constituents and this is one reason he lost. But it completely ignores another problem.
The Foreign Relations Committee was one of the big three or four committees where things happened when Charles Percy joined the Senate. But his Chairmanship combined with his Democratic counterpart Claiborne Pell (D-RI) weakened the committee as other Senators did not trust its product. If you don’t believe me, how about the New York Times. Other than the brief tenure of Richard Lugar, it was only the unlikely tag team of Jesse Helms and Joe Biden that brought that committee back to its former relevance.
This is important because there is a meme that “moderate” Republicans are competent while populist and conservative Republicans are somehow incompetent or dangerous to institutional strength. Nothing is so stark an example that this is not so than the Percy era at Foreign Relations. Mr. Tobin’s commentary that Mr. Percy was anti-Israel is a little too vicious considering he was also ineffective in that effort.
Moderation in the pursuit of Israel was no virtue but it did no lasting damage either. “Percyism” had no progeny. The current Senator from Illinois Mark Kirk is both competent and a moderate by today’s standards of the Republican Party. But he is not a liberal. His ADA rating will never exceed, as Percy’s did, his ACU rating. That represents an improvement in both the Republican Party and the Senate.
